noodles – Flavors of Diaspora

Playing with Ingredients: Sichuan Pepper Butter Pasta

And now, a well-timed recipe: with butter, for Shavuot. This recipe was inspired by a conversation two years ago – but first, a little context on Sichuan peppercorns, one of my favorite spices.

Sichuan peppercorns are a delicious spice native to China. They provide a smokey, slow heat to food with a famous tingling (mala in Chinese). These peppercorns – which are different from the black peppercorns we add to food – are a key part of Sichuan cuisine and all its fiery deliciousness, and predate the introduction of chilies to China in the 17^th century. Until 2005, they were not allowed in the United States, but now they are key to the increased popularity of Sichuanese cuisine. I have enjoyed using them while cooking Sichuan-style boiled tofu and other delicious things.

Cue to a party two years ago, when I got to meet Yao Zhao, who started 50 Hertz, which imports high-quality Sichuan peppercorns to the United States. We started talking about the wonders of the pepper, and he pointed out that it would be wonderful if people used Sichuan pepper more…with foods other than Sichuanese cuisine! As an authenticity skeptic, I really liked this idea.

Whole wheat noodles glistening with scallions — Sichuan peppercorn butter noodles with a healthy quantity of scallions on top. (Photo mine/June 2024)

More recently, I accidentally created this recipe while thinking back to that conversation. On a whim, I added some Sichuan pepper to some buttered pasta that I ate with fish and a salad. Since then, I have iterated on this recipe to produce this version.

This recipe goes well with crunchy vegetables and soft proteins like fish and tofu. You can also garnish with herbs if you like, but I appreciate the acidity of the scallions. This recipe tastes far better with whole wheat pasta – the nuttiness really matches the tingly sensation well.

Sichuan Pepper Butter Pasta

Serves 4

14 oz/400 grams short pasta (recommend whole wheat)

Water

1 tablespoon green Sichuan peppercorns (I recommend 50Hertz)

3 ½ tablespoons unsalted butter or vegan butter

2 teaspoons light soy sauce

1 teaspoon Chinkiang vinegar*

Chopped scallions, to taste

Cook the pasta in the water according to package directions. Reserve ½ cup of the pasta water before draining.
While the pasta is cooking, toast the Sichuan peppercorns: heat a skillet or griddle dry, over medium heat, then add the peppercorns and cook for about a minute, stirring. Remove from heat.
Grind the Sichuan peppercorns to a rough grind – you can use a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.
In a pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Then, add the pepper, soy sauce, and vinegar and mix thoroughly. Turn off the heat.
Add the butter mixture to the pasta, and add back the pasta water. Stir over low heat until thoroughly combined.
Garnish with the chopped scallions and serve.
Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to four days.

*If you cannot find Chinkiang vinegar, rice vinegar will do – add another half teaspoon of soy sauce in that case.

A Soup for Weekends

Soup with squash, beans, and noodles garnished with sour cream in a bowl

So when I was in Mexico a few months ago, I had one of the best soups of my life at a restaurant in Tula de Allende that served comida casera – roughly speaking, “home-style cooking” – but entirely vegetarian. I asked the proprietor, Cristina, for the recipe, which she roughly described in the telegraphic style of home cooks everywhere. A bit of this, a bit of that, and a good dose of black beans. Unfortunately, I left the scrap of paper with my notes on the bus back to Mexico City. However, with some experimentation over the winter, I was able to roughly recreate the soup with ingredients readily available in the United States.

The soup is chock-full of ingredients beloved by Jewish communities: beans, garlic, tomatoes, squash, and peppers among them. Though some would tell you that this is a “weeknight” dish, I would consider this soup better for languorous weekend cooking, when you have the time to spare a while to cook a big hearty soup. Eat leftovers during the week, when the myth of so-called “easy” home cooking is most apparent.

Sopa de Frijoles y Calabaza con Fideos

Serves 6-12

1 large onion, diced

7 cloves white garlic, minced

2 dried ancho chilies, broken apart into small pieces (keep the seeds if you want it spicy)

1 tablespoon table salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground turmeric

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon white or apple cider vinegar

1 15-oz can crushed tomatoes

1 large kabocha squash, peeled, seeded, and chopped into chunks

1 8oz/225g can corn kernels, drained (or 1 cup cooked corn)

2 15-oz/425g cans black beans, drained (or 4 cups soaked black beans)

2 sprigs dried epazote (optional)

8 cups water or stock + more as needed + more for noodles

1 package thin noodles (any shape you wish)

3 fistfuls fresh spinach, chopped

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Sour cream, chili sauce, and cilantro for garnish

Heat a soup pot or Dutch oven over a high flame. Add oil.
Add the onions, garlic, and chili and saute for 2-3 minutes, or until the onions begin to soften.
Add the salt, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, and nutmeg. Saute for another minute, or until the onions are translucent. Then, add the vinegar and saute for one more minute.
Add the crushed tomatoes and mix well. Saute for another minute, or until the juices are bubbling.
Add the squash, corn, and black beans, then add water and/or stock. If the water and stock do not cover, add a bit more. Bring to a boil. Add epazote if using.
Simmer for 45 minutes covered, or until the squash is completely cooked.
While the soup is simmering, prepare the noodles in a separate pot according to package directions.
Once the squash is cooked, add the spinach and stir in such that it is cooked. Remove from heat. You can add the noodles if you want, although I prefer to store the noodles separately.
Serve the soup with a helping of noodles and sour cream, chili sauce, and/or cilantro as a garnish. The soup keeps well for at least a week.

Es improbable que ella lea esto, pero mil gracias a Cristina en Tula de Allende por su receta excelente, y me disculpo si haya olvido algunos aspectos importantes.

Kasha Varnishkes with Mushrooms

Kasha varnishkes in a metal bowl — Kasha varnishkes. (Photo mine, May 2017)

There are some Ashkenazi Jewish dishes that I can easily explain to people who are not familiar with that style of cooking. Kneidlach are a classic case of “carbs in soup,” latkes are giant hash browns, and even p’tcha is a sort of 1950s aspic, but far older. (And generally tastier.) Cabbage soups make sense in many cultures, as do soft and sweet breads like challah. But then there are the ones that find confusion among Americans – the pickled herring and poppy seed filling, for example. But none have caused quite as many perplexed looks as kasha varnishkes – roasted buckwheat groats with noodles.

“What is buckwheat?” “Is that a health nut thing?” “You eat grains with noodles?”

Before roasting…

…after roasting (photos mine, May 2017)

Kasha varnishkes is a delicious dish – nutty and savory, with hints of carbohydrate sweetness and a touch of tannin from the buckwheat. Though it has dropped off the mainstream radar in recent years, other than a reference in Seinfeld, it is still a treasured treat for many Jews. The dish itself has a fascinating history. Kasha, or buckwheat, has been present in Jewish cooking since the 12^th century, when Mongol and Tatar invaders introduced buckwheat to Eastern Europe from Siberia and China. The plant – grain-like, but botanically not a grass like wheat – was well-adapted to the climate of northeastern Europe, and quickly became a mainstay of the local diet. The groats were usually roasted for better flavor, easier digestion, and longer storage time – roasted groats can keep for months in cool and dry spaces. Kasha varnishkes initially began as vareniki, or pierogi, stuffed with buckwheat. However, the dish soon became buckwheat with onions and strips of pasta, which skipped the laborious process of stuffing the dumplings. In the United States, the recipe then became popular with bowtie pasta, made initially in imitation of the Italian farfalle. Today, kasha varnishkes is almost always made with this pasta.

Cooking the roasted buckwheat groats!

Mushrooms, onions, and garlic – Ashkenazi goodness.

Mushrooms, onions, and garlic – cooked. (Photos mine, May 2017)

In this preparation, I made the kasha varnishkes with mushrooms. Kasha with mushrooms is another Jewish recipe with a long history – it was a particular favorite in pre-war Lithuania. Today one does not encounter kasha varnishkes with mushrooms too often in Jewish spaces, but the meatiness of the mushrooms complements the buckwheat quite well. Alone this dish is a delicious meal – especially with an egg – but it also makes a wonderful side dish.

Kasha Varnishkes with Mushrooms

2 cups buckwheat groats

1 lb bowtie pasta

1 lb white mushrooms, chopped

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon white vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Water

Vegetable oil, schmaltz, or butter

If your buckwheat groats are not roasted, roast the buckwheat groats first. Preheat your oven to 400F/200C, and lay out the groats flat on a cookie sheet or a big pan. Roast the groats for 15 minutes, or until they are golden brown. Remove from the oven.
Cook the bowtie pasta according to package instructions – generally speaking, about nine minutes in briskly boiling salted water. Set aside.
In the meantime, heat a pan. Add oil, and then the onions and garlic. Sauté for a minute or until the onions begin to soften.
Add the mushrooms, vinegar, salt, and pepper to the onion-garlic mixture. Sauté for another five to ten minutes, stirring regularly, or until the mushrooms have softened. When the mushrooms are soft and the onions very soft, remove from the heat.
In the meantime, bring four cups of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the buckwheat groats. Simmer, stirring regularly, for ten minutes, or until the buckwheat has absorbed all the water and is soft to the tooth.*
Mix the components together: pasta, buckwheat, and the mushroom mixture. They should be evenly distributed. I mix the pasta and mushrooms first, then the buckwheat. Serve hot or warm.

*Some people claim that coating the groats in beaten egg helps them not to stick together. I counter that if your buckwheat is too sticky, you have added too much water. Besides, fluffing with a fork is a very easy way to fix this problem.

Thank you to Ziva Freiman for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

BONUS: For another great variation on kasha varnishkes, check out The Gefilte Manifesto‘s version with crisp Brussels sprouts!

Lokshen Kugel

I’ve written before about kugels on this very blog: these lovely Ashkenazi casseroles that can conjure a whole world of warmth and homeliness for those who grew up with them. The past kugels I have written about are for one sphere of kugel: the dense potato or vegetable kind. The other kind of kugel is what I’m writing about today: the lokshen kugel, or noodle pudding. This kugel has a long history: German Jewish cooks started making kugels in the Sabbath cholent with egg-based noodles during the medieval era, when noodles were introduced to Europe from China and the Arab world. (Fun fact: noodles were already present in Middle Eastern Jewish cooking from antiquity.) Hence the Yiddish word for noodle, lokshen, comes from the Persian lagman, which itself comes from the Chinese lamian – itself the origin of the Japanese word ramen.

By the modern period, the lokshen kugel had morphed into a separate baked dish, savory or sweet. In the United States and South Africa, the latter variety is more common, often served with raisins and baked with an improbable amount of dairy. Among more “assimilated” Ashkenazi Jews in these and other countries, the lokshen kugel is one of the foods that stood the test of cultural change: many of my friends otherwise uninterested in the foods of their ancestors get quite excited when offered a slice of freshly baked kugel. My friends who are not Ashkenazi Jews – be they Sephardi, Mizrahi, or not Jewish – are often somewhat perplexed by the idea of a sweet noodle casserole. “You’ve made a pasta cake!” a Malaysian friend once told me. That said, the popularity of baked savory noodle dishes in the Sephardi and Mediterranean worlds means that the concept, for many, is not that unusual.

This recipe is for a somewhat more traditional variant of the lokshen kugel, with apples and raisins. Other “traditional” recipes may be for a savory “salt and pepper” kugel, or a sweet one with apricots. You can also go down the “non-traditional” route: my friend Maxine makes a delicious kugel with pineapples, and I myself have experimented with the Nutella-esque chocolate and hazelnut combinations. Whatever you do, it will be delicious.

Lokshen Kugel With Apples and Raisins

Makes 2 8-inch/20-centimeter round kugels or one 9×13 rectangular kugel

½ lb short, thin noodles – ideally egg noodles, but any flattish pasta should do

1 ½ cups sour cream

¼ cup melted butter + butter for greasing pan

1 cup white sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp honey

4 eggs

½ cup raisins, soaked for plumpness

1 large apple, cored and chopped

Cook the noodle according to package or other directions to the maximum suggested time – a softer noodle makes a better kugel. Drain and rinse well under cold water.
Preheat your oven to 400F/200C.
In the meantime, mix the sour cream, melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and honey together until well blended. Add one egg at a time and mix in until you have a consistent, creamy mixture. If your mixture is too thin, add some more sour cream; if it is too thick, add another egg.
In a large bowl, mix together the cooked noodles, apples, and raisins. Then, mix in the sour cream mixture until all the ingredients are blended together.
Decant the mixture into greased pans – I would make either two small eight-inch round kugels, or one 9×13 thick, rectangular kugel. Bake the mixture for 40-45 minutes, or until the custard has set and the noodles on top have caramelized.

Variations: Many people would simply omit the apple and double the raisins. You can swap the apple and raisins for ½ cup ground hazelnuts and 1 cup chocolate chips, for a gianduja/Not-Nutella kugel. You can swap the apples for 2/3 cup dried apricots, chopped and soaked.

A thank-you to Diya Mchahwar and Mara Lasky, who were the User Acceptance Testers for the apple-raisin variant.